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Great idea. I would hope that Chris and Joe can team up to link certain info from the old Negro League threads and or the new eligibility lists etc. There are a lot of Negro Leaguers already eligible (Jap Payne, Walter Ball, etc. etc.) about whom little is known, but at least their names should be easily accessible somewhere just to stimulate everybody's curiosity. Thanks to Joe and Chris for helping to bring all these guys into the discussion.

It's clear that there aren't very many electable new white candidates coming forth for the next several elections, and that we could be electing some other Negro League players before 1934. As one who doesn't feel like he has enough information to go on yet, could we start a few new threads off of this page, say for Poles, Petway, Santop, Mendez, and maybe collectively for the pitchers?

Glancing at the various 'experts' opinions, Bruce Petway seems to be clearly NOT one of the three best black league catchers, and consistently ranked behind his near-contemporary Louis Santop. While the NBJHA calls him a stellar defensive catcher, I can find no voice that suggests we honor Petway. Especially if we have trouble electing Bresnahan and Schang.

Note that Effa Manley and Gus Greenlee drew votes. That must mean that no distinction is being made between players and non-players. Given that, we can't really tell what the vote for Rube Foster means.

Note that Effa Manley and Gus Greenlee drew votes. That must mean that no distinction is being made between players and non-players. Given that, we can't really tell what the vote for Rube Foster means.

I agree. BTW, J.L. Wilkinson is another name that indicates the survey includes non-players.

This may not be the right place for this comment, but I think people might see it here. Buck O'Neil and Dave Winfield were talking on the Padres broadcast about the Negro League HoF. They mentioned there are only about 250 former Negro Leaguers still alive out of about 2600 who played. Wow. That is an amazing living history resource that will soon be gone. All fans of the current game will lose something when the last one dies. Also, I want to thank all those involved with researching and publishing a more complete historical record of the Negro Leagues.

You know what would be cool if someone wants to take on a project? Go through all of the year-by-year WS equivalencies that have been given for all of these guys, and list them year by year - it would kind of give us an idea of who the best players in each league were at any given time, etc. . . . I just don't have the time to do it, but it'd be neat to see!

(not sure of the best place for this, but I decided here was a agood as any)

In the world of 2004, how much weight do I put in the numbers I can find in bb-ref.com, WARP, Win Shares, etc., versus what "other" information I know about a player? Offhand, I'd say in our info- and anaylsis-rich environs, it's about 95% hard data, 5% opinion.

My quandry is much bigger when it comes to guys like Beckwith. Not a 'consensus' Negro League great, but the numbers imply he could mash. Okay, so which is the better data source? On the one hand, we have data that suggest reasons WHY he doesn't appear on many "lists" - too much emphasis on defense, lack of single position he played; this helps in interpretation. On the other hand, how good are the numbers? What percentage of Beckwith's career do we have data for? How much "other" info is missing, which might clue us in to why Boom-Boom wasn't quite the player his stats suggest?

If I split my ballot 50-50 on facts/opinions, Beckwith is going to have trouble moving up my HoM ballot. But I way-less-than-sure about where he belongs. Part of it is I haven't made the time to digest all the info you all have generated; and it's troubling enough to me that I wonder if I can in good conscience submit a ballot that likely won't include Beckwith, simply because of my own lack of time spent in consderation.

Tom, I know how you feel. Happens to me whenever I get too philosophical.

I think contemporary opinion is important even when we have lots of statistical evidence about a player. I mean, figgers lie and liars figger.

As for Beckwith specifically, I kinda disagree with Chris. Beckwith's reputation is not commensurate with his batting numbers, though I think the reasons for that are clear enough. Not just his attitude, but the fact that he did not have a single primary position, and the fact that he played with independent teams outside the NeL itself for several years.

I would say he is the anti-Pete Hill, Hill having the huge reputation and the numbers that just didn't add up.

But back to Beckwith, his numbers are impressive but I am inclined to give him more of a discount than some of the others. His value was not as well appreciated at the time, and so I appreciate it a little less today. He is #15 on my ballot this week.

KJOK:Just in case someone could possibly miss it over on Primer, article on the hopefully forthcoming Negro League Encyclopedia/database

I don't think it is an encyclopedia or database yet, but research materials (5000 pages includes copies of boxscores?) and compilations that will be available to researchers at the HOF library.

cited article: _ The research will be given later this month to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
_ Eventually, it will become part of the hall's statistical and narrative history of black baseball since the Civil War.
_ "This isn't just about baseball and numbers, it's about how this game related to society at the time, how baseball was such a rich part of black culture," says Jim Gates, the Hall of Fame's library director who wants the statistics published.

I don't believe the 5000 page "volume" is a candidate for publication. But I may be wrong. Who knows how many Total Baseball size pages that is.

KJ,
No, that change in goals would be a big retreat and big news, given the prominence of the project: funded by MLB and administered by NBHOFM, plus other reasons within SABR. But I doubt that presentation of the 5000p volume means the project is nearly complete.

Gary A,
Are you involved in the project led by Larry Lester, et al?
If not, do you feel the pressure to publish quickly?

Paul, yes, I've worked for the Out of the Shadows project, but I'm not actively involved right now. They've recently finished inputting box scores, and Larry says "stay tuned" for news on the encyclopedia project. I'm not sure exactly what they're planning or what the time frame is, but my impression has always been that they intend a full, published encyclopedia. When it appears, it will transform the study of the Negro Leagues in much the same way that the Macmillan encyclopedia transformed the study of baseball in general.

Actually, for walks the Out of the Shadows project does pretty much the same thing I do. So the encyclopedia, however it appears, will have as much walk data as can be gotten out of the box scores.

I'm continuing independently compiling Negro League stats; I keep track of stats that Out of the Shadows won't have, notably fielding statistics (they have errors and games played at each position), pitchers' home runs allowed, and batters' hit by pitch.

Certainly. Even in 1969, it wasn't economical to produce a full encyclopedia --as we understand it since 1969!-- without a computer database. Conversely, we had a full encyclopedia almost as soon as it was economically feasible to have one. Read about ICI and the 1968-1969 production of The Baseball Encyclopedia, MacMillan 1969, in the introduction to that first edition ("Mac1").

But look at how much S.C. Thompson did in The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball (1951, etc) and in All-Time Rosters of Major League Baseball (1967).
It's mind-boggling and hand-cramping

Will the database be guarded and leased to such players as the publishers of encyclopedias, web and print? I guess so, but I'm guessing.

My original point was that delivery of 5000 pages to the Hall of Fame sounds to me like delivery of intermediate findings, and hence a substantial progress report --$op for a big research grant?

So I think John Murphy has a better chance of seeing Deadball Stars of the American League in his Christmas stocking.

This info may be generally educational regarding baseball biographical, employment and playing data, both contemporary practices and modern editorial decisions. I'm sure it pertains to some Negro League seasons and some NeL reference books.

W.C. Madden, The Women of the AAGPBL: a Biographical Dictionary (McFarland 2005). From the 2-page "Brief History":
>>
The league kept good statistics only on players who played more than 10 games in a season. So statistics on some players are unavailable.
[contempory game records not researched or don't exist?]
While MLB considers only players who played in a game, the AAGPBL Players Association considers anyone who signed a contract as a player in the league.
[what defines a "player" elsewhere?]
Some 700 players signed contracts with the league, but no complete record has been compiled on those contracts.
[common, I'm sure]
The league did not keep accurate records on all players who played or were signed to contracts.
[which leagues did so? which league records are available?]
This book does not include information on players in which only partial names were uncovered during research.
[not even a list! unusual decision? What about the Record Book?]
This book does account for more than 600 of the players who signed contracts.
[why no precise count of who signed & who played?]
<<

W.C. Madden is also the co/author of The AAGPBL Record Book (2000), Baseball's First-Year Player Draft (2001), The Western League (2002), and The College World Series (2004). I don't know any of these books and in each case I am interested to know, in general terms, the problem of incomplete contemporary data and the decision about what to publish today. --Paul Wendt (pgw@theworld.com)

Jerrold Casway, Ed Delahanty and the Emerald Age of Baseball (U Notre Dame Press 2004). From the slip cover:
>>
Delahanty's career spanned the last decades of the [19c] during a time when the sons of post-famine Irish refugees dominated the sport and changed the playing style of America's national pastime. Irish-American players comprised [30-50%] of all players, managers, and team captains. Baseball for Delahanty and other young Irishmen was a ticket out of poverty and into a life of fame and fortune.
<<

Don't know how I missed this originally, but the I9 site actually did have SOME info on how their MLE's were produced:

Background Information
This entry is designed to give additional information about the methodology used to arrive at the i9's projections.

As you may guess, this is, at best, an inexact science. The projections are the result of much hard work, much inference, and much guesswork. The primary factors used include:

Available Statistics. These are available, in various snapshots, from many sources. Careful attention was paid to small sample sizes, and to consistency across sources.

Biographical Data. Player's reputations are built on something. Often, by close reading of multiple sources, it is possible to separate the rose colored glasses of history from true ability.

Secondary Data. All of the other info we have. For example, Louis Santop was, for a time in the 'teens, the highest paid NeL player. That is indicative--especially considering the structure of the leagues at the time--of his being among, if not the best player in the league. Good hitters would bat, most often, in the 2nd through 5th spot of the lineup. If a guy hit 7th and 8th for most of his career in the NeL, he probably couldn't hit acceptably in MLB.

There are several underlying assumptions that guide the modeling process. Some of these (I will add to this list as I have conversations with folks that remind me of them) are:

The quality of NeL play increased over time, with position players ahead of the pitching talent, at least until the early 1920's.

The quality of NeL and Cuban League play was inferior, overall, to MLB play. As a rule, NeL statistics have to be reduced--sometimes quite drastically.

The best NeL players would be among the best MLB players.

The lower end NeL players would not make the cut to play in MLB

Note that, from the beginning, our goal is not to claim we somehow know what these players would have done. If, at the end of the day, we can look at the projections and say that we have gotten the shape of their careers correct, that, yes, Pete Hill and HR Johnson were great players, regardless of whether we are correct that Hill hit .322 in 1907, that, at the close of day, Johnson was a legitimate MVP candidate a few times in his career and a borderline HoF candidate, that will be success.
08.27.2003

Faxcinating. I would have to say that ESPN has done a hell of a job here. Not that there aren't nits and nats. On the top list, they may have underrated Torriente, Wilson, Suttles and Santop, not to mention Beckwith, but OTOH perhaps we are underrating Mackey and Lundy.

I feel fairly sure they are underrating HR Johnson.

Interesting that at 2B they come up with Allen over DeMoss with Hughes a close third (and all three very close).

On the second list, Campy is an anomaly and Dave Brown is a pitcher/murderer. That leaves Smith, who only played 5 years of elite ball, and Dobie Moore, who played 10 or more. Moore's career, IOW, was brilliant, but not that short.

On the third list, they clearly miss on the old-timers for the same reason they miss on HR Johnson. Mendez and Monroe clearly belong higher up on that list. And probably Chet Brewer.

On the fourth list, one would like to know more about Leroy Grant and Rev Cannady.

I don't know much about Pee Wee Butts, but I would have thought he would have been on these lists (didn't see his name, doesn't mean I didn't miss it). Also, no mention of Bonnie Serrell which seems odd, but maybe that's because he was in Mexico so long.

The great thing about these lists, though, is that it's just getting those names out there for some much-belated recognition!

I can't find which thread, but somewhere recently someone asked about "independent" Negro League teams, contraction, etc. in the 1930's, so below is a list of all the major Independent/Other League teams by year: